this time bomb that the congress created was designed to deal with deficit and the debt. we won't get that right now. but we might get a plan to deal with taxes, to avoid the fiscal cliff, that's a win for the economy and the american people. >> john, it is joe johns in washington, d.c. we have heard so much about tax increases and how they're going to handle those and not so much about the spending cuts and my question to you is at the end of the day, are we going to end up essentially with some type of a plan that could add to the federal deficit instead of reduce it? >> you noticed that, huh? sequester hasn't really been the topic of much conversation. look, that is still unclear right now. obviously, again, the point of all of this, the reason that over 500 days ago we set the fiscal cliff with regard to the spending cuts and knew the bush tax cuts were expiring ten years ago on this date, that was an impetus to create bargain to deal with deficit and debt. what seems to be coming together now is largely, as you said, a planned focused on taxes. not just the tough tax